Why not? You knew our grandmother, Anfisa Mihalovna?
KULIGIN.
To be sure I did!
KUDRIASH.
I should think we did!
BORIS. She quarrelled with my father you know because he married into a noble family. It was owing to that that my father and mother lived in Moscow. My mother used to tell me that she could hardly endure life for three days together with my father's relations, it all seemed so rough and coarse to her.
KULIGIN. Well it might! you have to be used to it from the first, sir, to be able to bear it.
BORIS. Our parents brought us up well in Moscow, they spared no expense. They sent me to the Commercial Academy, and my sister to a boarding school, but they both died suddenly of cholera. We were left orphans, my sister and I. Then we heard that our grandmother was dead here, and had left a will that our uncle was to pay us a fair share of her fortune, when we came of age, only upon one condition.
KULIGIN.
And what was that, sir?
BORIS.
If we showed a proper respect for his authority.
KULIGIN.
Then there's no doubt, sir, you'll never see your fortune.
BORIS. No, but that's not all, Kuligin! First he finds fault with us to his heart's content, and ends none the less with giving us nothing, or some tiny dole. And then he'll go making out that it's a great favour, and that he ought not to have done even that.
KUDRIASH. That's just the way the merchants go on among us. Besides, if you were ever so respectful to him, who's to hinder him from saying you're disrespectful?
BORIS. To be sure. And indeed he sometimes will say: I've children of my own, why should I give money away to outsiders? Am I to wrong my own like that?
KULIGIN.
It's plain, sir, you're not in luck's way.
BORIS. If it were only me, I wouldn't care! I'd throw it all up and go away. But I'm sorry for my sister. He did write for her to come too, but mother's relations wouldn't let her, they wrote she wasn't well. It frightens me to think what the life here would be for her.
KUDRIASH.
Of course. The master's no decent manners at all.
KULIGIN. In what capacity do you live with him, sir; what arrangement has he made with you?
BORIS. Why, none whatever; 'you live with me,' he says, 'and do what you're told, and your pay shall be what I give you,' that's to say, in a year's time he'll settle up with me as he thinks fit.
KUDRIASH. That's just his way. Not one of us dare as much as hint at a salary, or he storms till he's black in the face. 'How do you know,' he'll say, 'what I have in my mind to do? Do you suppose you can see into my heart? Maybe, I shall be so disposed as to give you five thousand.' It's no use talking to him! Only you may be pretty sure he's never been disposed that way in his life.
KULIGIN.
It's a hard case, sir! You must try and get the right side of him somehow.
BORIS. But the point is, Kuligin, that it's impossible. Why, even his own children can never do anything to please him; so it's hardly likely I could!
KUDRIASH. Who could please him, when his whole life's spent in bullying people? Especially where money's at stake; no accounts are ever settled without storms of abuse. Often people are glad to go short of their due, if only he'll let them off quietly. Woe to us if anyone vexes him in the morning! He falls foul of everyone all day long.
BORIS. Every morning my aunt entreats us with tears in her eyes: 'Don't anger him, friends! Dear boys, don't anger him!'
KUDRIASH. But you can never avoid it! If he goes to the bazaar, it's all up! He scolds all the peasants. Even if they ask him less than cost price they never get off without abuse. And then he's upset for the whole day.
SHAPKIN.
He's a bully—there's no other word for him.
KUDRIASH.
A bully? I should think he is!
BORIS.
And what's fatal is if some man offends him, whom he daren't be rude to.
Then all his household have to look out for themselves!
KUDRIASH. Bless my soul! That was a joke though. Didn't that hussar let him have it on the Volga, at the ferry! Oh, a lovely shindy he kicked up afterwards, too.
BORIS. Ah, and didn't his family suffer for it! Why, for a fortnight after we were all hiding away in the attics and cupboards.
KULIGIN.
Surely that's not the folk coming back from vespers?
[
KUDRIASH.
Come on, Shapkin, let's get a drink! It's no good stopping here.
[
BORIS. Oh, Kuligin, it's awfully hard here for me who've not been used to it. Everyone seems to look with
